Dear Mandela – South African shack dwellers film and talk

Thursday Menace is pleased to be screening 'Dear Mandela', a 2011 film about Abahlali baseMjondolo – a post-Apartheid social movement in South Africa. They are a radically democratic and grassroots movement, fighting for dignity and basic services (water, electricity, refuse disposal) for the poor. Abahlali grew out of a road blockade organised by residents of the Kennedy Road Shack Settlement in the City of Durban in early 2005. The words Abahlali baseMjondolo are Zulu for 'people who stay in shacks'.

The film will be introduced by Gerard – a comrade who spent time working with Abahlali.

"Abahlali’s call for land and housing in the cities has become a threat to the authorities, some NGOs and some academics who still believe that social change cannot come from the bottom, who still believe that democracy is all about being loyal to their authority. Such top down system has terrorised our society. In fact it is an insult to assume that poor people can not think for themselves, that someone else must talk for them without their concern. In view of a rejection of this understanding a new living politic of the poor has been born.”
– S’bu Zikode, October 2007

For more info on the film see http://www.dearmandela.com/ and https://vimeo.com/26538549

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1022585834505219/

Thursday Menace is a space to gather, meet, hang out and plot. It starts at 7pm, then chats and hanging out till later. Food by donation.